Posts Tagged: 2 Broke Girls

I love sitcoms. I love them so much in fact that I recently wrote one which was – happily for me – been optioned by a television production company.

While I was researching my project – i.e. sitting on the sofa in my house, glass of something nice in hand watching hour after hour of some of my favourites sitcoms – I noticed the lack of full figured women in them today. Not in America, where they are more plentiful, but here in the UK.

In the US they have a slew of curvy women on the TV screens every week. My own personal favourites are the gorgeous Fran Drescher (Happily Divorced) a woman who has the most fantastic figure on the telly at the moment –and don’t get me started on those gorgeous dresses she wears!

Fran Drescher (Happily Divorced)

There’s Kat Dennings (2 Broke Girls) who even clad in a terrible orange and red waitress uniform manages to look amazing. And let’s not forget about Megyn Price (Rules of Engagement) who is understated in the way she dresses on screen but is clearly a very curvy lady.

These three examples are just off the top of my head but there are plenty more to choose from – actresses that are sexy, sassy and show their figures with pride, and what’s more they have strong positive personalities and despite what obstacles are placed in their way, they endure – fabulously.

Each has no shortage of male admirers and I’m pretty sure whatever lovely dress Fran Drescher has on in each episode must sell out before the plot hits its stride, so women love them too.

Kat Dennings (2 Broke Girls)

Here in Britain we don’t have anywhere near as many curvy ladies presented in such a way.

Of course there’s Dawn French (Roger and Val Have Just Got In) but Val is hardly given the most flattering of outfits to wear!

Olivia Colman (Rev) plays a vicar’s wife hilariously but she barely has the opportunity to put lippy on and is always weary, made knackered by her situation and marriage (even though it’s one of my favourite sitcoms).

Miranda Hart plays a more awkward gawky version of herself on her very successful sitcom, but given the most glam Miranda ever looked on the show was when she was dressed by experts on transvestite fashion, it’s not looking good for full figured women in British comedy, is it?

Miranda Hart (Miranda)

I appreciate that UK comedy is very different from sitcoms made on the other side of the Atlantic, as us Brits have a much more reflective approach to humour, and that down trodden and unlucky-in-love characters have given audiences a hell of a lot of pleasure over the years.

But isn’t it about time curvy women weren’t the butt of jokes, but the ones making them? I’d really like to see an attractive full figured actress taking the lead role in a UK sitcom, looking fabulous and having a confident, prominent role with killer lines.

Is that too much to ask?

About

Blogger: Cath Bore

I am a writer based in Liverpool - of script, screen and prose. The Full Story is about life as a full-figured woman. For curvy women getting a decent outfit proved difficult or expensive until recent times. Shops at last have got wise to the idea that curvy women love to wear nice clothes too and not live in shapeless baggy smocks! In The Full Story I blog about clothes, aim to big up and celebrate great role models for curvy women, cover lifestyle issues, food, health, sexism…and have some fun on the way.
Follow me on Twitter @cathbore and on my website cathbore.com